NATO and the Warsaw Pact

Intrabloc Conflicts

Mary Ann Heiss

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781612776026
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

There is no shortage of literature addressing the workings, influence, and importance of NATO and the Warsaw Pact individually or how the two blocs faced off during the decades of the Cold War. However, little has been written about the various intrabloc tensions that plagued both alliances during the Cold War or about how those tensions affected the alliances' operation. The essays in NATO and the Warsaw Pact seek to address that glaring gap in the historiography by utilizing a wide range of case studies to explore these often-significant tensions, dispelling in the process all thoughts that the alliances always operated smoothly and without internal dissent. The volume is divided into two parts, one on each alliance. An introductory essay by S. Victor Papacosma spells out the themes addressed in the individual essays and the volume's coherent historiographical contribution. They include, but are not limited to, military and political matters, the consequences of World War II for the non-Western world, the role of individuals in shaping historical events, and the unintended consequences of policy choices and developments. The international group of contributors brings to bear considerable policymaking and academic experience. In approaching the Cold War–era alliances from a new angle and in drawing on recently declassified documentation, this volume adds to the literature in recent international history and will be of interest to scholars in such fields as U.S. foreign relations, European diplomatic history, and security and defense studies, among others. Visit the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security site for more information and news related to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

PART I

NATO

1

NATO United, NATO Divided

The Transatlantic Relationship

LAWRENCE S. KAPLAN

Published in 2001 by the NATO Office of Information and Press, the NATO Handbook tells its readers that the alliance’s decision-making process is “dependent on consensus and common consent.” If there should be differences between member governments, NATO will make efforts to reconcile them “in order that joint actions may be backed up by the full force of decisions to which all member governments subscribe. Once taken, such determinations represent the common determination of all the countries involved to implement them in full.” This confident language suggests a history of relationships in which the alliance managed to confront “decisions which may be politically difficult,” thereby adding “force and credibility” to the outcomes.¹ When those differences seemed impossible to keep within the confines of the North Atlantic Council, such as the withdrawal of France from the integrated military structure, the alliance could move on knowing that it was flexible enough to surmount such challenges.

The list of deviations for individual positions within the alliance, including those of Spain and the Scandinavian members as well as France, however, is long enough to raise a question about the meaning of “consensus.” Were the allies as a body satisfied with France’s decision to withdraw from the military structure of the alliance in 1966 or Denmark’s and Norway’s refusal in 1949 to allow stationing of foreign forces or nuclear weapons on their territories in peacetime? It would seem logical to find conflict rather than consensus to be the norm among twelve, then fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen nations during the Cold War. If so, extensive consultations in the North Atlantic Council and other NATO bodies were vital for the successful functioning of the organization. They were conducted behind closed doors where trade-offs were necessary to reach decisions acceptable to all. How the allies were able to subsume their differences under a common rubric, known as “the NATO method,” is the subject of this chapter. Case studies during NATO’s first fifty years illuminate both conflict and consensus.

NATO Before the Korean War

NATO’s first year, before the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, witnessed many of the problems that the alliance had to cope with in succeeding years. The allies had to deal with an unequal partnership in which the United States, the dominant figure, had the controlling vote behind the screen of consensus. This was hardly surprising. Western Europe was desperate for the kind of aid that only American power could provide—namely, the assurance that its economies would recover and its societies would remain free of the rising Communist menace. In the sweltering heat of a Washington summer, delegates from the five members of the western union met in July and August 1948 with U.S. and Canadian representatives for exploratory talks on European security.² The Europeans sought military aid (ultimately, article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty) and a guarantee of America’s commitment (article 5). After months of negotiations they received both, but at a price.

It took more than the summer of 1948 in Washington before the United States was prepared to break its long tradition of nonentanglement. The five signatories of the Brussels Pact reluctantly accepted language that did not quite fulfill the terms of the “pledge,” as Canadian diplomat Escott Reid characterized the most important article of the treaty.³ This, of course, referred to article 5—everything else was subordinate to this vital assurance in European eyes. The appropriate language in their view was available in article IV of the Brussels Treaty, which stated clearly and simply that an attack against one member “will . . . afford the Party so attacked all the military and other aid and assistance in their power.” The State Department responded negatively to this wording in August 1948, asserting that “the United States could not constitutionally enter into any Treaty” that might place the nation “automatically at war as a result of an event occurring outside its borders or by vote of other countries without its concurrence.”⁴ That this contingency was unacceptable to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee became the nub of controversies that postponed signing of the treaty until April 1949.

A better choice of language had to be found to assure Congress that military action would not be an automatic response to an attack against an ally, yet this response was precisely what the allies required of the United States. The semantic agility of George Kennan, the father of containment but a skeptic about its military dimension, provided a suitable compromise. Instead of the allies taking “forthwith such military or other action . . . [as] may be necessary,” the word “military” was finessed by replacing it with “including the use of armed force” to follow “such action as it deems necessary.”⁵ Individual members were free to fashion their responses according to their respective national interests.

The tortuous language of the article sharply contrasted with the spare terms of article IV of the Brussels Pact and certainly did not offer what the Europeans wanted. It was, however, the best they could get in 1949. What may have tipped the balance in favor of the American version of article 5 was a recognition that the president’s powers as commander in chief could evade or at least dilute the constitutional prerogatives of the Congress. Sufficient precedents existed to give the allies confidence in the credibility of the American pledge. Thus, Woodrow Wilson in 1917 brought the nation into World War I despite a strong isolationist pull against involvement, and in the nineteenth century President James K. Polk manipulated Congress into declaring war against Mexico by dispatching troops into a disputed area in the expectation that the Mexican army would fire the first shots, thereby assuring passage of a declaration of war. Doubts about the viability of article 5 had to be weighed against the positive psychological impact on Europeans of the American guarantee. The image of U.S. B-29s, armed with atomic weapons, in the air twenty-four hours a day, and prepared to strike the Soviets in the event of an act of aggression, may have been an illusion, but it was a comforting one to the European allies in 1949.⁶

In article 5 the Europeans achieved almost all they wanted, while Americans could claim that constitutional procedures would be followed. There would be no automatic involvement in a European war if one of the allies were attacked. The Brussels Pact members were less satisfied with the enlargement of the prospective alliance to include such countries as Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, and even Italy. Adding these peripheral nations meant sharing American military aid with as many nations as comprised the Western union itself.⁷There was little choice. The United States needed Scandinavian and Portuguese bases in the North Atlantic to transport the aid abroad. Even more frustrating than having to settle for smaller pieces of an aid pie were the restrictions the United States placed on the activation of article 3, which would offer U.S. military assistance to alliance members under the rubric of “mutual aid.” So urgent was this article that the Brussels core members presented a laundry list of items only one day after the signing of the treaty on 4 April 1949. It appeared that article 3 was almost as important to them as article 5.

Their démarche discomfited the Truman administration, which was reluctant to mix military aid with the principles of article 5. Washington felt that European requests were premature and perhaps somewhat unseemly by placing excessive emphasis on the military character of the alliance. It was as if the Europeans were too impatient in their race to avail themselves of American resources.⁸

The allies did receive congressional grants of military aid—$1 billion—before the end of the year, but not until the administration and the Senate had attached conditions that did not conform to the spirit of the alliance. NATO was intended to function as a multilateral institution, and the prospective recipients wanted to apply the principles of integration to the distribution of U.S. funds. Congress would take no action until the Senate ratified the treaty, and even then it took news of the Soviet detonation of an atomic device before a military assistance act could be passed in October 1949.⁹ With its passage, the allies had to accept the bilateral nature of the grants: negotiations between the donor nation and the beneficiary determined the detailed arrangements of dollars to be dispensed rather than NATO as an organization. This bilateral approach, intended to ensure that the funds would be properly utilized, inevitably generated friction between the United States and its allies. Moreover, the American military advisory groups in European capitals proved too intrusive and frequently too numerous. For example, the mission in Oslo was larger than the entire Norwegian foreign office. In larger capitals the diplomatic status of the U.S. aid inspectors smacked of imperial arrogance. The sensitive French insisted that “advisory” be removed from the title of the mission, and the British insisted that military personnel wear civilian clothes.¹⁰

The military aid teams were embarrassments to European governments, as suggested by their efforts to disguise them. To add injury to insult, equipment was slow in arriving and often inadequate for a particular country’s needs. In brief, the American tradition of nonentanglement in European affairs may have been breached by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, but old habits of unilateralism died hard, and new assumptions of superiority based on the prerogatives of power reflected an imbalance in the alliance that might have doomed it in its infancy. If it did not, Europe’s sense of dependence on American support outweighed the resentment that American policies generated.

What helped preserve NATO in that first year was a fitful recognition on the part of the senior partner that it should repair damage to the relationship that it had unwittingly inflicted during the war. One instance grew out of the alliance’s need to develop a strategic concept to cope with the adversary’s aggressive actions. The distribution of forces in the concept displeased all the allies, large and small alike. The role of strategic air strikes would be filled by the United States, tactical air by Britain, and ground troops by the remaining member states. Logic dictated that strategic air power be placed in American hands, since only the United States possessed aircraft armed with atomic weapons. Nevertheless, the allies were unhappy serving as cannon fodder in the event of a Soviet attack when American airmen in the sky above the battleground would be less subject to casualties than the ground forces below. Echoes of dissent over this division of military labor could be found a half century later in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

To calm some of the passions aroused by the unequal assignment of forces, the United States revised scenarios that the Joint Chiefs of Staff h...